Many modern devices capable of receiving email, such as smart phones, have limited storage capacity. As a result, emails containing attachments may not be stored on the device to avoid overburdening the storage capacity. However, most systems that search emails and their attachments require that the attachments be stored on the same device performing the search. For this reason many devices of limited storage that receive emails cannot perform a search of email attachments because the attachments are not stored on the device.